Who am I?

I’m a, blogger and event/marketing/media consultant.
Blogging since 2002 and online since 1993 (I still remember my
Compuserve account number), I live in North London with my husband and
toddler, but was born in Cheadle.

Current interests: the planet, healthy living, cooking, Art Deco
ceramics, all flavours of CSI, sensible financial planning, social
media, virtual worlds and the arts in general. All this may change: a
woman’s prerogative, after all.

The New Jew Manifesto

We are the New Jews. We are out and loud and proud. We are
upfront. We are in your face. We talk loud and we don’t care.
We’re the hello-I’m-Jewish-generation.

Old Jews speak of their Jewish identity in the hushed tones
generally reserved for discussing terminal illness. Old Jews spend
their time point-scoring on who’s Jewish – they so
want Roman Abramovich to be Jewish, even if it’s
just because of the money – whereas New Jews either
don’t care, or, if desperate, consult Jewhoo.com.

Old Jew mindset: Jew-centric. Who’s Jewish? Is it
good for the Jews? Are they – indeed, at last – out
to get us? New Jews are entering into Jewish-Buddhist dialogue, saving
the last synagogue in Calcutta and cycling for any cause necessary.

Old Jew mindset: when your (Jewish) boss whispers under his breath as
you arrive at every meeting, unzerer. Of course,
occasionally he has to whisper nisht unzerer. New
Jew mindset: Jewish is never in brackets.

It’s an attitude, not just an age thing. So you
might be fourth generation, or have just – figuratively
– got off the boat, but if you’re a New Jew, you
don’t have a problem saying who you are or being who you say.
There’s nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, and you
don’t care.

It’s an Englisher thing,
exclusively. While all Americans are New Jews, Anglo New Jews are
reclaiming their visitor status and saying we are upbeat. We are
positive. We no longer walk the middle of the road, knowing
we’ll get run over.

Old Jews say: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s
eat. New Jews say: we are the post-anti-semitism generation. We
don’t want to predicate our identity on taking our collective
mind off our tsures by having something to eat,
on an if-you-don’t-laugh-you’ll cry basis. Would
you like to sponsor my yogathon raising money for a new
cross-denominational Jewish project?

New Jews read the Guardian. Old Jews read the Times. No-one
reads the Telegraph. Rootsy Old Jews crave a fat-laden Blooms-fest; New
Jews wanting culturally-relevant comfort food get bagels at 2am. Old
Jews live in a cul de sac in Stanmore or Hampstead Garden Suburb
(because we all know that dead-ends with no through traffic say
low-key. Old Jews’ religion is being
low-key). New Jews live in Cricklewood, Brondesbury, Islington and
Kentish Town. New Jews are urban and out there, reclaiming the inner
city areas the Old Jews forsook for suburbia.

Old Jews holiday almost exclusively in Israel, and –
occasionally – Marbella. New Jews don’t care where
they spend their leisure time, but it’s just as likely to be
a boutique hotel in the Dead Sea as a shul crawl in Morocco. Old Jews
visit Poland, and pay their respects at Auschwitz. New Jews go to
Cracow, and play the violin. New Jews will do sports that require
additional insurance cover.

Jonathan Freedland? New Jew. Melanie Philips? New Jew, albeit
a slightly hysterical one. Isaiah Berlin? Dead Jew, but New,
nonetheless. Norman Lebrecht? Old Jew. Jonathan Sacks? Old Jew,
desperately seeking New Jew funkiness, flirting with modernity, and
secretly attending Old Jews Anonymous. Where he can’t get
past the First Step (to paraphrase: “we admitted we were
powerless over anti-semitism, fear, fear of risk, risk in general
— that our lives had become unmanageable”).

New Jews don’t mind the word
“Jews”, while Old Jews are only Jewish,
and some of them only quarterly. Old Jews run around trying to make
Google stop being anti-semitic. As if you could stop the whole internet
from being anything. And New Jews don’t care: we have the
strength of purpose and identity to know that other kids in the
playground might not like us. But that’s OK.

Old Jews revel in the security of defending themselves. In the
inward-facing look-after-our-own mentality. If we don’t, who
will? If not now, when? Old Jews ask questions. New Jews have answers.

If only it was that straightforward – everyone has
hues of blue, shades of Old, shades of New. Sure, this is a taxonomy,
but I’m both. So I was Old Jew, when I name-checked Daniel
Pearl in Pakistan long before I heard him say “My name is
Daniel Pearl... I am a Jew“, and it hurt. More. But last week
I went to see Oi Va Voi in concert (as much Cultural Jew as New Jew,
but that’s a whole separate conversation). Perhaps
we’re all a delicate, provocative cocktail of Old and New on
any given day.

If you’re a New Jew, you know you have five thousand
years of Jewish history resting on your shoulders, but you’re
not going to let it, like, depress you. You’re going to take
everything that’s good from your heritage and turn it into
something that responds to the new world. That’s the New Jew.